From Stranger Things to The Whale, from February 23 at the cinema: the incredible actor growth of Sadie Sink, who from the role of Max Mayfield to that of Ellie has passed through the Fear Street trilogy and a young Taylor Swift in the music video of All to Well.
Now that The Whale Of Darren Aronofsky arrives in Italian cinemas from 23 February thanks to I Wonder Pictures and the Unipol Biografilm Collection you too will be able to appreciate the incredible interpretation of Brendar Fraser, nominated for an Oscar for Best Actor in a Leading Role and who has been talked about since his world premiere presentation at the last Venice Film Festival. But next to him in the film there is someone else who could make your eyes pop for the skill and for the conscious and attentive path he has made so far in his short but already glittering career. We are talking about Sadie Sinkwho most of you will know as Max in the cult Netflix series Stranger Things. Let’s retrace his most iconic roles to get to the one in The Whalewho get ready will conquer you once again.
Max in Stranger Things
After being born and raised in Texas in a large and sports-oriented family, she has been interested in the world of entertainment since she was a child. She first in the theater in local productions, including Annie, then in the cinema and on TV up to the world star system. Especially thanks to the role of Maxime ‘Max’ Mayfield in the second season of the Netflix cult series Stranger Things. The girl had a big responsibility: to arrive as a new entry in an already close-knit group of young interpreters who had conquered the world thanks to the widespread diffusion of the platform and the emblematic series of the nostalgia effect for the 80s. Her Max, initially rejected even towards the other characters, introduces viewers to her difficult family situation, primarily with his half-brother Billy Hargrove (Dacre Montgomery), in a house that doesn’t feel loved and wanted at all.
Over time she becomes an integral part of the group, love interest of Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin) and best friend of Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown), complete with a famous episode-sequence at the Starcourt Mall, so much so that she is promoted from recurring to regular. But it is in the fourth season that it fully blossoms: her Max becomes one of Vecna’s potential victims, bringing out all the inner discomfort she is experiencing: depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and the mourning process after Vecna’s death. Billy. She creates so many facets for Max, she stars in the famous cemetery rescue scene that made a hit like Running Up That Hill by Kate Bush – so much so that the funko-pop of the season dedicated to her is wearing headphones and a walkman. She is equally central to the heartbreaking sequence of her near-death with Lucas. In the fifth and final season we are sure that another ups and downs of emotions will be given.
Stranger Things 4: Kate Bush with Running Up That Hill is the real heroine
Fear Street and All to Well
Sadie Sink has made guest appearances on series such as The Americans, Blue Bloods, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt and the unfortunate American Odysseyto enter in 2017 precisely in the cast of Stranger Things. For Netflix, however, she played another important role, this time in the two 2021 films Fear Street Part 2: 1978 and Fear Street Part 3: 1666 directed by Leigh Janiak and part of her trilogy that began with Fear Street Part 1: 1994, based on the book series of the same name by RL Stine which focuses on the curse that affects an entire city. Sink plays the protagonist Ziggy Berman as a young man, who in the adult version has the face of Gillian Jacobs.
But it is above all music (once again) that brings her luck when she is chosen as the face of Taylor Swift as a teenager in the music video All To Welcome, the first directed by the singer-songwriter so as to become a real short film. Sadie Sink stages all the contrasting and extreme sensations typical of that age next to the ex Teen Wolf now grown Dylan O’Brien, to represent a difficult relationship with an older boy who over time takes the weight of the age difference. The same one that will make her protagonist grow enough to lead her to write a successful book about it. Just like Swift did in real life with her songs. Another great responsibility, brought home magnificently by Sink, who becomes the protagonist of another “cult” scene involving a red scarf left hanging on the stairs, which made headlines because it seems it was a garment that Adam Levine, ex of the Swift, had actually left home after their relationship ended. In short, a sort of autobiographical quotation never officially confirmed.
Fear Street Part 2: 1978, the review: The second chapter of the entertaining Netflix slasher in teen sauce
Ellie in The Whale
Sadie Sink has also participated in films such as The Bleeder – The story of the real Rocky Balboa, The glass castle, Eli, Dear Zoe but it is The Whale that also officially launches her into the Hollywood film star system, thanks to having worked with a director like Darren Aronofsky and with an actor like Brendan Fraser and the presentation at the Venice International Film Festival, a prestigious consolidation of his still so young acting status. Another difficult role and another great responsibility: it seems that Sink likes these kinds of challenges: playing the daughter of the protagonist Charlie, a 250-kilogram teacher of literature, forced home by his illness, let go and heartbroken for a past love that he couldn’t share with his daughter. The latter’s name is Ellie and she is an extremely angry teenager, with her father and therefore with her world, for having abandoned her and her mother as children.
The Whale, the review: An extraordinary Brendan Fraser in a film that strikes at the heart
But as the film progresses, we learn more about their past and what led them to become so estranged. And on what leads them to meet again many years later, when the little girl doesn’t seem to really care about school and the role of teachers, and is always ready to say and do bad things against people, primarily his companions and his father. Such an angry and ferociously sadistic little girl could easily be portrayed as standoffish and totally repulsive, instead Sink mixes that constant anger of hers with an ironic effect and a hint of a sarcastic smile on the sides of her mouth that cannot fail to involve the spectators, make them laugh too – it is a film, despite the theme, in which they laugh a lot – and make them feel close to the young co-protagonist, which many other still immature and emerging actresses could have made detestable. What about the final sequence, which involves Charlie and Ellie and brings out all the chemistry between Fraser and Sink and their gazes full of unsaid words, finally expressed.